"I need to build up to it. I'll keep it as short as possible. I'm pretty sleepy, too."
FOR most of the first year after his release, Matt hadn't been able to do much but dodge reporters and continue his researches with his computer on the Internet.
He tried a few times to elude them, managed to shake them off once in a while, got into the habit of withdrawing money from his bank accounts when he had the chance and never using his credit cards, but they always found him again. It wasn't hard to do in this day and age. Few people had the skills to stay hidden for long, and Matt finally admitted it wasn't worth the effort. He decided to wait them out. He had plenty of money, his needs were modest. He stayed at inexpensive hotels and moved every few nights, just to inconvenience the media. Time travel was a very big story, he was one of only two people known to have done it, and the world wanted to know all about it.
At first there were actual satellite trucks that followed him around as he drove from city to city. Those gradually dwindled to a few pool vehicles with cameras recording him every time he got out of his car or left his hotel. One shot or another of him showed up on most newscasts for almost a month. If he sneezed, it would likely get on the air. A stumble was apt to cause a flash newsbreak.
He tried to go to Europe, which was a mistake. A good percentage of his fellow passengers were reporters, and they weren't shy about crowding around and asking questions. When he got off the plane in London he was facing a whole new set of reporters, even more aggressive than the ones at home. You would have thought he was a rock star or the president of the United States. He walked straight to the airline counter and bought a ticket back to America.
Gradually, as he continued his silence—he learned early that even saying "no comment" only encouraged them—the crowds lessened. It helped that Susan was giving accounts of their adventure—always on tape, never live, and always carefully controlled by Howard's spin doctors. The story she told was the truth, in the sense that she didn't lie about anything, but there was much she did not or would not tell.
"It must have been awful."
"Not as bad as what you went through. I watched them hounding you. I did more interviews than I wanted to so maybe it would take some of the pressure off you."
Matt smiled. "You know, I thought it might be something like that. Thanks."
"I have no idea if it did any good." She looked down at the table. "I have a confession to make." She looked up again. "It was during that first year, after wondering where you were while they had you locked up, and then seeing what they were doing to you... it was then that I realized that I loved you."
Matt said nothing. She took his hand.
"I liked you a lot when we were working together. I liked making love to you, it made me less afraid of what was happening to us. But I was always a little afraid of you."
Matt was genuinely shocked.
"How could you be afraid of me? I didn't think you were afraid of anything."
"Oh, there's plenty of things that scare me. I just try not to show it. You were just so... so damn smart. You were so much smarter than me I just couldn't keep up with you. When you started talking about quantum physics and like that, I felt like such a dope."
"Last time I checked, they weren't graduating any dopes from veterinary school. Seems to me you need the same skills as somebody who becomes a doctor, only your patients can't even tell you what's bothering them."
"Wrong word, maybe. I know I'm smart, but it's... relative, like Dr. Einstein said. I felt like a dope." She smiled briefly. "I'd never met a supergenius."
Matt grimaced. "I've had that trouble all my life. I try not to talk shop, explain what it is I'm researching, but with you, we were both working, and you wanted to know. I probably shouldn't have, but as a conversationalist, I am a dope."
"I'm not blaming you, Matt. I wanted to know what you were doing. And you're a good explainer. But you'd lose me."
"Like you say, it's all relative. I happen to have a mind that's quick with numbers. And you know what? There are people with an IQ of 60, people who can't even tie their shoes, who can do anything with numbers I can do." "Is what you've got to tell me more about the time machine? More quantum theory and chaos theory and stuff like that?"
"I began to realize that my point of view was entirely too provincial to explain the universe as I had encountered it."
THE media circus that his life had become gradually abated, though it never entirely folded its tent. There was a flurry of activity at the one-year anniversary and from time to time an enterprising intern for a television show would approach him, usually in restaurants while he was eating, in the vain hope that he'd suddenly decide to spill his guts. But a circus can't go on forever if the trapeze artist won't swing.
Matt deliberately tried to lead as boring a life as possible, in part to discourage the hordes of the curious. In other words, he sometimes realized wryly, he tried to return to the kind of life he led before Howard Christian barged into it. He thought about returning to a university somewhere to continue his researches, plenty of places would have jumped at the chance of having the guy they thought of as "the man who invented time travel" on the faculty, no questions asked, no pressure applied, here's your lab, Matt, and do whatever you want in it... but he realized that didn't appeal to him anymore. His quest was taking him in other directions.
He entered a monastery in New Mexico for a while. Partly it was so he could look out the window and see the forlorn press pool, only a handful at that point, forced to stake out the building in the blistering heat. But he really was in need of a quiet, cloistered lifestyle.
This was sort of a Club Med monastery, nondenominational, catering to people with emotional problems to resolve or deep doubts about existence to work out. Matt put himself in the latter category. The quarters were Spartan, the food was plain, the brothers wore robes, and you chanted and sang at appointed hours, but nobody demanded that you believe in God. Sort of religion lite.
Things eased up greatly when the biggest male box office star in the world was arrested for murdering his wife and two children. He claimed to be innocent and there were no eyewitnesses but his story was Swiss cheese. He hired a team of high-powered lawyers—some of them lured away from Howard's school of piranha—and suddenly there was hardly room on the news for coverage of the war in Indonesia, much less a nontalking has-been quasicelebrity like Matt Wright. The news organizations took to checking in on him weekly, then monthly, and then he was gone.
Not lost. They found him again easily enough. And during the brief period when there had been no reporters aware of his whereabouts, Matt noticed that two men he had thought were reporters were still dogging him. One was a very large man with very little fat on him, maybe an ex-marine. The other was wiry, moved smoothly as a lizard, and had eyes like stones. He called them Jarhead and Snake. He decided they were probably Howard's agents, and knew they would never give up, but they never interfered with him so he ignored them.
"He was easy. Some of the ones before him were tougher." He grinned.
"OH, Matt, that's awful."
"Scared me a little, I admit it. He told me they'd 'taken down' three men who were trying to do me harm, and foiled one kidnap attempt. Said they'd heard rumors that one foreign government was thinking about trying to get their hands on me."
"What did you do?"
Matt shrugged. "What could I do? I felt claustrophobic enough with the press corps following me around. I didn't like Jarhead and Snake following me, for that matter, but I never complained after that. I didn't want to lock myself away behind walls. I enjoyed the monastery for a month, but I wouldn't have wanted to stay longer. I decided to take my chances.